Times 26,222

Author   topicaltimPosted on Categories Daily Cryptic
Clock stopped at just under 20 minutes, so I’m going to go out on a limb and pronounce this a tricky little blighter and no mistake. Several clues which needed wrestling into submission but we got there in the end, even if I wasn’t wholly convinced by one or two bits of wordplay at the time; so let us see if they’re more convincing in review (by which I may well mean: let’s see if anyone can find a tactful way to point out what I didn’t understand correctly on those clues). On review, I think actually my concerns have been narrowed down to a missing “with”, so that’s all good.

Across
1 ROOK – {C}ROOK{S}.
3 MALEVOLENT – VOLE, which is definitely a little beast, splitting (LAMENT)*.
10 FITTEST – FIT(=outbreak), TEST(=assessment).
11 CHEQUER – R{uns} following CHEQUE. I was thoroughly taken in by the fake cricket allusion, so it took a while to spot the possible “bouncer”. It must be five years since I wrote a cheque, so its days are surely numbered in crosswords, but I thought that about Beerbohm Tree.
12 THE SILVER SCREEN – (CRE{w}RELISHEVENTS)*.
13 SLAVIC – A.V.(=Authorised Version) inside SLIC{k}.
14 GOD’S ACRE – GO(=agree, as in…I suppose as in “go with”, but doesn’t that need – well, a “with”?) then SACRED with the last (D) being first. I started out thinking about Long Acre, but eventually my brain clicked. I must have heard of the term before, probably in another crossword, as I wouldn’t have previously thought I knew anything about German burial grounds of the Moravian Church.
17 PREVIOUS – PIOUS(=”spiritual”) bears the REV(erend). A very modern synonym: picture Ray Winstone, for instance, muttering “That’s a bit previous, mate”.
18 IMPORT – “The writer’s”= the writer is = I’M, from the setter’s perspective, followed by PORT(=”left”).
21 COMBINATION LOCK – COMBINATION(=”union”), LOCK(=second row forward in rugby). Nice definition in “how to get security by dialling”.
23 LEISURE – LE{V}I minus V., SURE. Not a waltz king, or the England cricket supremo, but the creator of blue jeans.
24 CONSIGN – (GI’S)rev. in CONN. I had Maine pegged as the likely eastern state ahead of Connecticut until I abbreviated it.
25 DISSENTING – {maor}IS SENT in DING{o}.
26 LEAN – triple def.; David, possibly the greatest British film director, one verb and one adjective.
 
Down
1 REFUTES – TE is the note, in the whistle-blowing REF, U.S. Happily, the Times still knows the difference between “refute” and “rebut”, a distinction not observed everywhere these days.
2 ON THE MAKE – two ways of looking at it; if you were choosing your shopping, you might look at the brands available and make a choice based “on the make”; also, someone looking for an amorous conquest might be “on the make”. Personally, I left this to the end, as I’d always thought it meant trying to make a quick buck somehow, with a suggestion of dishonesty a la Arthur Daley, but the dictionary backs up both.
4 ACTIVE – C{horus} in (EVITA)rev.
5 ESCARGOT – The French for “is” = EST, insert CARGO to get a delicious snail lunch. Cracking clue, I thought.
6 OPENCAST MINING – MIN{ister} in [OPEN(=start), CASTING(=allocation of parts)].
7 EXUDE – take D{ied} from the EX-DUDE. Perfectly good synonym, though I’m not sure Beau Brummel would relish being described as a “dude”, of course.
8 TERENCE – (RECENT)* + E. Publius Terentius Afer, to give him his full name – once more I am grateful for my classical education, which has mostly been used for crossword purposes all these years since.
9 VERISIMILITUDE – (MURIELIVISITED)*.
15 CROCODILE – in case it’s not a thing outside British schools, a crocodile is the informal name for a line of schoolchildren who’ve been paired off so they don’t get lost or otherwise into trouble as they walk along.
16 BUDAPEST – (A DUB)rev. + PEST(=”trial”).
17 PICKLED – PICK(=”cream”) LED(=”was at the top”).
19 TAKEN IN – double def.
20 ZIRCON – Z is today’s unknown, then [C(=third-rate) in IRON]. I bet if I turn over to QVC, they’re selling some right now.
22 MAINS – I{sland} in MAN’S. No man is an island, said John Donne, but he was clearly wrong.

43 comments on “Times 26,222”

  1. fine except i put dissention (tailless dog in revolt) but that doesn’t quite work since revolt is the definition not the anagrind.. never heard of zircon but have heard of cubic zirconium so seemed a small step. Not heard of terence either but there is terence rattigan and probably others. I too thought on the make was just a con so i spent a bit of time wondering if there was another word. Maybe i’m just mixing with on the take. Never heard of that meaning of previous either. About 30 mins if i subtract a phone call

  2. Slow start with only ZIRCON and CROCODILE obvious

    LOI ON THE MAKE

    COD 11ac I wrote one today for the first time for ages.

    Their planned extinction by the British Govt. in 2017 has

    apparently been halted.

    horryd Shanghai

  3. … to the growing list of those who left 2dn to the end. I have a slight feeling that “on the make” suggests something more than mere dating.

    Glad Tim explained 14ac. I was at a loss and completed the answer from the checking letters … once I had them all. Of which, Tim, the URL is slightly wrong.

    Very much liked the triple def. at 26ac — one to go with 12ac perhaps?

    Oh and … I first heard “previous” in the required sense in Lancashire in the early 70s. Though I did have to ask what it meant.

    Edited at 2015-10-06 05:00 am (UTC)

    1. Hmmm, that URL is right when I post it, but changes when I save my draft. I am not enough of an HTML expert to know why or how to fix it.
  4. 78 minutes but ‘on the name’ (which just edged out ‘on the nose’) at the devious 2d. I saw my (expected) mistake when I submitted and the right answer when I waded through a solver.

    I liked CHEQUER and had fortunately met DUDE for dandy somewhere recently.

  5. Perhaps the setter is exploiting the fact both agree and go need ‘with’ in the correspond/be consistent with sense.
  6. Another one where the seemingly impenetrable eventually yielded, just in time to beat my 30-minute target.

    Never heard of the director, but I suspected a triple def and decided that two out of three ain’t bad.

    And add me to the “LOI 2D” club. Needed a run through the alphabet. Twice.

    Excellent puzzle. Thanks setter and Tim.

  7. I have little to add to Tim’s comments. I also had 2d as my LOI for the same reason.

    PREVIOUS as “early” or ( of young ladies) “forward”, is not necessarily modern I think.

    At 11ac my first thought was of Robert Maxwell, the “Bouncing Czech”.

    Dereklam

    1. Back in 1987 when Pat Cash defeated Ivan Lendl in the Wimbledon final, the Aussie newspapers couldn’t resist the obvious headline….Cash Is Better Than Czech!
  8. Very enjoyable but quite hard to finish off so I needed 47 minutes in all.

    I also didn’t know ON THE MAKE in the required sense and had to work through the alphabet letter by letter to accommodate the checkers ?A?E and to come up with something that seemed appropriate. My initial thought there, until checkers put paid to the idea, was “on the pull”.

    I’m not sure I have met “chequer” in the singular as a game.

    I have no problem with “go” for “agree” in the sense of matching or harmonizing. They’d both usually take “with” which aids the substitution test, but both can be used without it on occasion too.

    Edited at 2015-10-06 05:22 am (UTC)

    2. I couldn’t think of an instance where ‘agree’ can be used on its own in this sense, albeit my cogitations (and Googling) did not last long.
  9. Lots of excellent clues. LEAN was my COD – I really like those triple defs – and it was good to see for a change that ‘bouncer’ was not a ‘roo’ or anything to do with cricket, in 11a. GOD’S ACRE was my LOI which took ages to parse. I can also hear Arthur Daley, whether 2d or not, using PREVIOUS as both an adverb and a noun. Thanks for the reference to Minder – I think it stands up amazingly well after however many years.

    Thank you to setter and blogger.

  11. Count me in as one who had “On the name” too, having previously tried “on the list”.
    Also I was trying to fit “roo” or “joey” into 11a and was running through all the Strausses I knew (Richard, Oscar, Johann, Josef, Eduard) until I landed on Levi – what does that say about me (that’s rhetoric by the way)? Apparently Strauss is the German for Ostrich.
    Other than that, an enjoyable puzzle that took me about 45 minutes all told.
  12. In two parts, a half-hour online with 13ac, 14ac, 6d, and 2d undone, and then the rest a few hours later. I ‘got’ GODS ACRE early on, but couldn’t justify it until after submitting. 2d finally came to me once I got SLAVIC, leaving 6d as my LOI; once again because of enumeration: I would have hyphenated OPENCAST, and was looking for OVER- for a long time instead. I knew both meanings of ON THE MAKE, but somehow the sexual sense strikes my ears as a bit on the outdated side. Did anyone else try to make Tati fit 26ac?
      1. I was thinking more that the distinction between those on and off has disappeared: You on the make? Well, duh!
    2. I don’t know about dated, but for me the definition is somewhat, ahem, euphemistic.
  13. 30 min with 2dn LOI – I’d initially misread the clue as ‘biased’, so was thinking about ‘on the list’, Eventually got 12ac after spending time considering possible anagram of ‘skilfu’,
  14. 2 down is not a great clue. I thought it was ON THE CASE which is where a date stamp would be

    Edited at 2015-10-06 09:48 am (UTC)

    1. I feel a (tiny) bit less silly for putting ON THE CASE in now, knowing that I wasn’t alone…
  15. 37:35. I found this quite tricky. Thanks for explaining 14a, Tim. 1a and 2d my last ones in. Good fun, though. 20d my favourite.
  16. 28m. I found this very hard, and I can’t say I enjoyed it very much. There were too many clues where my reaction was less ‘eureka’ and more ‘well I suppose so’. ‘Agree’ for GO, ‘dandy’ for DUDE, the idea that you ‘get security’ by dialling a COMBINATION LOCK, ‘having date in mind’ for ON THE MAKE. It’s all justifiable but it felt to me like this puzzle was only challenging because the setter was stretching things a bit too far.
    Mind you I’m still a bit lurgi-ridden so perhaps I’m just being excessivly grumpy this morning.
    1. I don’t think you’re being unfairly grumpy. I agree with you completely. My copy of the puzzle is annotated with a copious supply of question marks, exclamation marks and the odd ‘oh dear’ or ‘awful’. I left 2d unfinished; I couldn’t think of anything likely to fit a possible definition, and didn’t really care. I even considered ‘on the game’.
      1. That describes quite accurately the way I sometimes make shopping decisions at the butcher!
  17. Liked ESCARGOT but my overall reaction was much as Keriothe above – setter trying just that tad too much to be clever and not always succeeding

    ON THE MAKE the worst of them. My last in also and the number of us in that boat should be a message to the setter – it doesn’t quite work mate!

  18. The clock says 50.49, but in that time my importunate neighbour also said rather a lot of things at my door, so probably somewhere under 25 minutes in total. LOI2D,SAEE. Horrible clue: you know it’s going to be something of a pot luck solve as soon as you see ?A?E. And I don’t think I pay that much attention to the manufacturer myself, except perhaps in Fairtrade purchases. Most of my shopping decisions are ON THE PRICE, which didn’t fit, or (with date in mind) ON THE SELL BY TODAY shelf. In my family, that’s the Chuckouterie.
    Competitors will be delighted to know that there will be someone at the Championship they can beat, as (thanks to advice received on these pages and some significant but apparently unnecessary grovelling) I have received my confirmation letter. Come on the afternoon session if you think you’re hard enough.
    I know it’s only a crossword clue, but do Maoris and dingos coexist anywhere else?
  19. DNF. Beaten by several clues. I also had BACK instead of LOCK for a long time in 21a. Some great clues and I have no real complaints.
  20. Some clever wordplay here, including ESCARGOT, which gets my vote for COD, but also some too-obvious definitions and clunky surfaces. Nevertheless I enjoyed it and felt that with a little more rigour it could have been a top-class offering. No problem with ON THE MAKE, in fact I thought it pretty good.
  21. Ouch, disaster; I took under ten minutes to solve all but 2dn, and then literally another ten minutes going through every possibility for ON THE _A_E, in the hope of finding something that made sense to me. As the clock approached 20 minutes I got fed up and bunged in ON THE CASE, knowing it couldn’t possibly be right (though I have occasionally bought video games with attractive cases). Literally within 30 seconds of that ON THE MAKE occurred to me. I do think of ON THE MAKE as “trying to make something of oneself”, as mentioned in the blog above, though I guess I do have dim memories of people trying to transitively “make” a romantic conquest, probably in America and decades ago though…
  22. Just as I was thinking the antibiotics were having the required effect on my severe sinus infection so that my cryptic brain was beginning to function as it should and along comes this beast. 2d was my last in too, finishing in a very unimpressive time of 21:32.
  23. Also ended with 2d, after an alphabet run. Unconvincing, that one. But I learned how to spell VERIS…, so that redeems things in my book. Regards.
  24. It’s all been said, but not everyone has said it – the combination of PREVIOUS and ON THE MAKE held me up long after everything else was slotted into place.

    Mind you, after trying today’s Indy I’m not going to complain about this

  25. Funny how different people’s brains work. Until I read all the comments I regarded 2d as blindingly obvious – a rare straight write in for me. I am not trying to be clever-clever as I am a million miles from championship standard generally (45 mins is my average)and I live in awe of the 10-minutes or less crew.

    Chris

    1. Almost a write-in for me: ON THE GAME is the phrase I would (never) use for trying to get a date; and I’d assumed there was some quaint, supermarket-based game-show on TV in UK that was an easy cultural get for UK-ians. Is Supermarket Sweep real, or from a film? But spent 5 minutes at the end doing the alphabet trawl to get MAKE, taking me over 40 mins. Otherwise I didn’t mind this crossword, though it did feel a bit loose.
      Rob
  26. I crashed and burned with 2dn, and I’m very pleased to see I was in good company. After 20 mins I had all but the 1ac/2dn crossers with 1ac taking so long because I couldn’t get “ramp” out of my mind and I tried unsuccessfully to parse it for a few more minutes before the penny dropped. I stared at 2dn for a fair bit longer but when I got to 35 mins I decided life is too short and resorted to aids. Even then I plumped for “on the case” which I hadn’t thought of earlier. Bah humbug! Not the most pleasurable of puzzles.
  27. Not my favourite crossword, and I do think that the clue for 2d should have given our esteemed editor pause. I plumped for ‘On the case’, as it’s somerhing I might have said in a previous life, when I was working, and my boss asked why some output of mine was somewhat overdue. And, like Verlaine, I have known my impulse buying to be influenced by attractive packaging.
    For the record, 26m 51s with the error.
  28. Come to France, Tim. Cheques are still widely used, even at supermarket checkouts. Thanks for God’s Acre. That was my LOI along with crocodile. I did like the different usage of Knight and trial in Budapest. that was my COD. 1hr 10m 46s, plus break for dinner.
  29. 15:20 for me (+ 10 seconds waiting for the server to respond, giving me 15:30 on the TCC leaderboard).

    I spent the last three or four minutes agonising over ON THE MAKE – which seemed fine from the “shopper’s choice” angle but which I couldn’t relate to “date” – before plumping for it on the grounds that I couldn’t think of anything better. My first thought was “thank heavens that puzzle didn’t come up in the Championship”, but since ON THE MAKE turned out to be right (with the required meaning ringing a bell once I’d looked it up) and since others seem to have fared even worse than I did, I’m now thinking “how I wish they’d kept that for the Championship”.

    An interesting puzzle, which I enjoyed even though I had difficulty finding the setter’s wavelength.

  30. Not sure 3A is the best clue, as MALE(FICE)NT could also work (but of course does not fit 6D).

    Paul G

  32. The trouble is that many speakers use ‘refute’ (= disprove)to mean ‘reject’. It’s a sort of power-speak.

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